Around 15 years ago, a friend gave me a card she had made. I stuck it on my bulletin board. Today as I removed it to look at it (“What is this card anyway? Why is it here?”) I saw that there are many pushpin holes in it – obviously throughout the years, I’ve removed it, apparently read it, and then pushpinned it back onto the bulletin board. It reads: “If you realized that the nurtured spiritual part of yourself would accompany you on your eternal journey and that everything else you have labored so hard to accumulate would vanish the instant you depart his world, would it alter your daily agenda?” In tiny print at the bottom is the source, a book entitled: Shards: Restoring the Shattered Spirit by Walter Cooper. Somehow I’d never gotten around to looking him up. I pushpin it back onto my bulletin board.
Haunted, I walk around my house. I thought I was a minimalist. Yet there is evidence of STUFF everywhere. George Carlin once said, “That’s all your house is- a place to keep your stuff. If you didn’t have so much stuff, you wouldn’t need a house. “ I stub my toe on the CD tower. When was the last time I played a CD? Itunes and Spotify have made my collection a pile of dust in the corner. I gulp as I remember the hundred or so in the cabinet. I grab one and play it. Memories flood. Can’t dump them yet.
Little things: the broken necklace I meant to fix sitting in my jewelry box, the picture on my wall from my clown career (wasn’t that just the other day, NO!), a purse I bought in the 80’s so pretty, so out of fashion, it will come back, the list is endless. Each time I clean out my closet I encounter my accordion, sitting in its case, accusing. What would Marie Kondo say?
Should I rid myself of the past? Are memories part of my “nurtured spiritual part” or simply more stuff? Does letting go mean I have to clean house? Do I need these items to preserve those memories? The other day I found my grandparents’ citizenship applications. A memory I didn’t even know existed. Rifling through the forgotten items in my cabinet, I find my Groucho glasses. I put them on. I ask the Marie Kondo questions:
- What purpose did the item fulfill? …ummm. Goofy pleasure?
- Do I have a set home for this item? …sort of. In the back. Under the Tarot deck.
- Am I showing enough gratitude toward the item? …Right now, yes!
- Does this spark joy? – what a question! Keeping them!
Of course, letting go is not just an act of cleaning house. Letting go of old habits, unnecessary tensions, or sabotaging thoughts can also lighten life. It sometimes seems like any Awareness Through Movement® lesson can help, but here’s one that often helps me “let go” by learning to lengthen and yield.
